00:00Can you tell us defence spending is being framed in some quarters as welfare versus defence but
00:05public opinion is broadly behind increasing defence spending. What's your view? I think it's a
00:09ludicrous binary. To start off with welfare a huge part of that is pensions and I don't think we
00:13should be making some kind of intergenerational divide. More widely on defence I think we need
00:18to have a holistic view of this. There was a report out last year by the joint intelligence
00:22chiefs. They talked about the real threats to our national security also including pandemic
00:26resilience, cyber security and of course threats from a climate crisis and so I think we need
00:31to have an alternative strategic defence review that looks both at these more kind of newer
00:36emerging threats alongside traditional threats so we know exactly what it is we need to spend,
00:41what the gap is and how we fill it. I think that's much more important than creating arbitrary
00:45numbers.
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